Flickr Gets Sold To SmugMug

Flickr was acquired by Yahoo back in 2005 for $35 million but the former’s fate has been up in the air since Yahoo’s acquisition by Verizon in 2017 for $4.5 billion. It was combined with AOL in Oath and since then it has been unclear what Verizon would do with Flickr. Well, what they did was sell it to professional photo hosting service SmugMug.

It’s official. SmugMug has purchased Flickr for an undisclosed price.

“Flickr has survived through thick-and-thin and is core to the entire fabric of the Internet,” SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill told the scribe. “We’re thrilled for these two brands to come together to grow their photo sharing communities and continue to innovate for their members,” Oath said in a statement provided to USA Today.

Yahoo wasn’t really able to capture the interest of the average user for Flickr, but for quite some time, it was a favorite of those interested in photography. The average user started using Instagram and Snapchat despite multiple redesigns and feature additions to Flickr by Yahoo. It just wasn’t meant to be.

MacAskill has promised the Flickr community that their service won’t be going away and that Flickr will be maintained as a standalone community that’s separate from SmugMug. Good news for users.